Welsbach Question ?

262. Welsbach Question ? by Tony Tripp (tonytr1@hotmail.com)
     Posted: Jun. 10, 1999 @ 02:48.
     ::I know that Welsbach discovered the thorium that makes mantles glow but most references I find are for gas light mantles. Did Welsbach produce an oil lamp mantle? Also did Welsbach produce an oil lamp burner? If so could someone give me a discription of what they look like? Thanks,Tony
     

• On Jun. 10, 1999 @ 21:22, Fil Graff, Guild Secretary (fgraff@comcast.net) wrote:
  Tony: Rene [6/11 add: OOPS! It's Carl Auer; Rene was Argand. Shame on me!] Auer, Count Von Welsbach (a title) discovered the thorium-cerium mixture that allowed a flexible material to be formed into a mantle soaked in his brew. If one has a Bunsen (back to chem lab...the non-illuminating flame found on a lab burner; you know, BLUE) flame, it matters not where the flame comes from, be it city gas, kerosene vapor, gasoline vapor, alcohol vapor...whatever. The Bunsen flame is what is hot enough to cause the chemicals in the mantle to incandesce (not BURN, but produce radiant light). So a mantle is a mantle, so to speak. Most "gas" lamps used a rigid mantle, as they operated at relatively low fuel pressure. Same with a kerosene wick lamp...low fuel pressure, so rigid mantle. Pressure lamps (like the Coleman), whether gasoline/petrol or kerosene/paraffin use soft ("rag") mantles, as the fuel pressure would blow a rigid mantle apart.
  Don't get the man Welsbach and the several companies that used his name mixed up. "The Welsbach Co." in the US was in the gas lighting business. It eventually split into two companies, one making fixtures and such, the other making mantles. The mantle company was eventually purchased by Lindsay Lighting Co (later Lindsay Lighting and Chemical Co.), and moved fron Glochester, NJ to West Chicago, ILL. Still operating with the Welsbach brand, they made mantles under licence from Aladdin, and apparently DID sell a pressure lamp they purchased from Coleman. Welsbach-London sold the very first replacement kerosene mantle burner, the (unsuccessful) "ERA" in ca. 1899. There is a picture of the ERA burner on the cover of a recent LIGHT INTERNATIONAL, the Guild magazine. I have been trying to get the only example we know of (borrowed...not mine!) burning for some weeks, and gave up because the darn thing gets so hot I'm afraid it will go into melt-down! We have a rather intense international effort going on now trying to track down the details of this burner and the UK company that Patented and sold it (we think it was actually made in Germany). 1898 UK Patent, 1899 US Patent, Company existed 1899 to 1903. :: Fil ::
  
  • On Jun. 10, 1999 @ 22:47, Tony Tripp (tonytr1@hotmail.com) wrote:
    Fil, Thanks for all the good information, you are a living textbook for lampers. I'll try to get a copy of the L.I. magazine. Im saveing your post to my lamp folder on the desktop.I hope you can get the burner working properly, does it have some sort of metal cage surrounding the mantle that is heating up? Thanks, Tony
    
    • On Jun. 11, 1999 @ 19:15, Fil Graff (fgraff@comcast.net) wrote:
      Tony: It's not the mantle that's heating up, it's the metal of the burner itself. This burner concept was a pretty radical idea at the time, and dreams of riches may have run away before all the nuts and bolts of complete development were in place. As this is a "oner" complete burner as far as we know, it is too important an artifact to mess around with trying to get it to work as we'd expect an early Aladdin to work! Getting rid of the heat build-up was quite a challenge to all the early burner makes, particularly these hearty pioneeer working with a mantle that incandesces at about 1600 to 2000 deg.F! The ERA seems to be too heavily cast, and has too small an air flow to dissipate heat well. The problem was solved by other makers within a couple of years, because the Fellboelin, the Praktikus, the Index, the Aida and the Kronos were all available by 1910, and the Aladdin Model 1 came in 1908. They all get hotter than modern burners, but not so bad the wick knob becomes untouchable as on the ERA sample I tested! :: Fil ::
      
      
      
    
    
  
  
• On Jun. 11, 1999 @ 14:26, John in England (sirjohnclay@aol.com) wrote:
  The mantle saga began in 1828 when Berzalius descovered the mineral known as "Thorite" from which thorium nitrate evolved. The next link in the chain of cause and effect was forged when Fox-talbot discovered that incandescent ash produced light when a flame was applied in his laboratory around 1835. It was not until 1886 when Dr, Carl Auer (Welsbach) filed his first mantle patent, and that was after his professor's invention, (Dr. Bunsen and his burner) was used to incandesce Auer's early mix of thorium nitrate and several of different compounds (including lanthium, uranium etc)- until cerium eventually was used at around 1%. A long and complex invention the mantle was, covered amply in Light International vol 1 - # 1, Hope this goes some way to answering your question. Archbishop.